


youth

by unhappyrefrain



Category: Kagerou Project
Genre: Drabble Collection, Multi, pre-timeline
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-05
Updated: 2013-09-05
Packaged: 2017-12-25 17:52:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/955980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unhappyrefrain/pseuds/unhappyrefrain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a collection of drabbles about their childhoods. various pairings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. flowerspeak

Shuuya wants to crown Tsubomi with daisy chains and weave white lily-of-the-valley through her scalp, baby's breath tucked in the spaces between her ears and her hair. Daisies for innocence, baby's breath for everlasting love, he wants to crawl through the fields and pluck poppies, the flower of August, from their stems and thread the deep red against the forest-green of her hair. August will come and pass but Tsubomi will never lose the small light she keeps in her red irises and Shuuya wants to match the crimson of her eyes to the crimson of the season they remember.

Ayano taught them the names of flowers, plucking through the gardens in the back of the Tateyamas' apartment, and gathered bouquets for Tsubomi, her gentle hands sorting each flower and bud, saying, violets, day lilies, queen anne's lace, and Tsubomi brought them back to the room and they were discarded in an empty closet. She did not want to be given flowers just because she was a girl. When Ayano pointed at the clusters of pansies springing up in the brick windowsill, Shuuya turned his face away. Kousuke looked interested, his eyes shyly lighting up, but not even Ayano could read that he wanted those mottled red and purple pansies for himself, so she picked them from their bases and gathered them into her hands and wrapped a string around the stems, handing it to Tsubomi with a cheerful smile.

Tsubomi did not want these flowers. She handed them to Kousuke sometimes, after his eye ability acted up and he was able to understand, and he took them with an excited look in his eyes, grinning at her.

"I can't tell you how much this means to me, Tsubomi," he giggled, and Tsubomi's heart lifted even as it fell-- her flowers could come to something, her flowers could cheer someone, someone other than her.

* * *

Shuuya was lying.

He didn't want people to know that he was still listening when Ayano explained the meanings of certain white flowers. He didn't want anyone to laugh at him, for caring too much about girl things, but he had his eyes on Tsubomi from the beginning, silently making notes on meanings that could apply to her, his most hardy and yet delicate flower.

_(thrives in harsh climates, heat or cold, but delicate to the touch. hardy and long-lived. blooms are small but vibrant.)_

And now as Shuuya threads his fingers through the garden and pulls up weeds with his small, thin hands, dirt under his fingernails, he gathers a bouquet of flowers in a language Tsubomi understands. He pretends he's not crying, and he does a good job of it, as he circles the daisy chains around the crown of her head and tucks the poppies behind her ears.

They are young, but they understand.


	2. joking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> kousuke protects mary. mary rescues kousuke.

They pull her hair.

Her long, white hair, that looks like it belongs to an angel or a ghost-- they grab fistfuls of it and yank it, as if they're trying to tear out her heart through it. She yelps and cowers, not looking them in the eyes, just hiding her face and her tears.

Kousuke is not willing to stand by and watch, but Mary tells him no, when she gets home she will only allow him to comb out her hair, keep the strands separated. She refuses to let him interfere, saying that maybe she'll get someone to help, a teacher, perhaps, or someone older. She leans her head out of the bathtub while Kousuke brushes it, long and damp and white. He doesn't look past her head. Kousuke is ten. Mary is one hundred thirty-three.

Of course it doesn't stop Kousuke like feeling and acting as her big brother. He's ten and he's taller than Mary, Mary who looks like she is thirteen. Mary who cowers from people Kousuke's age when they yank at her hair, stomp on her feet, yell out names and hiss at her like snakes. Mary who nearly hibernates in the winter, cold-blooded with a warm heart.

They say they're just joking, but when Mary comes home crying every day, Kousuke can't be convinced it's anything but malice for someone so different. Her white hair is fit for an angel, not a human, and she is bright and radiant and picks flowers. She wears dresses instead of her school uniform, and hides her hands in her lap. Her hair twitches when she gets excited. She doesn't fit in, and people hammer in the nail that stands out.

Not one of them deserves to touch her hair.

Kousuke yells, and the black-haired boy who had been gripping Mary's hair falls back and off her. He is surprised, Kousuke's hairclip falling out as he adjusts a bandage on his nose, and Mary's eyes shoot open as the boy charges him--

His figure falls, completely paralyzed, twitching but frozen, and Mary calls Kousuke to run while he has time.

 


	3. linger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> konoha doesn't want to remember.

Memories are strange things, Konoha decides, things that he's not sure he needs.

The only memories he ever had were scary ones-- beams piercing through flesh, the horriying sound of metal against bone, and both of them are screaming. He is perfectly content in his life without having to think about a past he once possessed-- there's nothing he has to compare amnesia to, no better life he can remember. He is quiet and he sleeps often, he doesn't talk unless he is talked to, and when he dreams his mind is empty and his heart feels dull. It's better than any pain, Konoha thinks, and when he looks at Shintaro or Hibiya when they cry, he wonders if he has ever felt that sort of pain before.

( _if he ever did, he doesn't remember._ )

Konoha is taller than most, and it gives him a higher view, looking down at the crowns of his friends' heads. Sometimes Hibiya asks for a piggyback and he obliges, hoisting the boy onto his shoulders, and as Hibiya says "put me down, put me _down_ , I didn't mean shoulder rides," Konoha makes a face and sighs.

Ene looks at him often, but Konoha has learned that she's often hard to talk to. She asks for him sometimes, yelling at Shintaro to bring her to Haruka, but who is Haruka, anyway? In some other world he might have known a Haruka, but Konoha, this Konoha, knows a Haruka does not exist. Ene has it wrong, he thinks as Kido shuts the door to Shintaro's room. Everyone has it wrong. _Everyone knows something but me._

Konoha decides that making his own memories is the priority for now, but it doesn't stop him from dreaming every once in a while-- that a long, dark corridor stretches out in a school he seems to know by heart, and opening the door to the right, two shadows stand against the window, and the cherry blossoms are falling, but there's blood on the floor. He wakes up screaming.


End file.
